The pub at the top of the world

EQUIPPED with a sense of adventure, a couple decided to take on the challenge of running Britain’s loftiest inn, 1,732ft above sea level.

The Tan Hill Inn, in North Yorkshire’s Swaledale, is renowned as Britain’s most remote pub [ALAMY]

Once upon a time a young, naive and completely inexperienced couple took over the most wild, weird and wonderful pub in the country. I know because I was one half of that couple.

One morning I read a newspaper article about a search for new managers for the most remote inn in Britain.

It was four miles from its next-door neighbour and, on top of the Pennines, so exposed that the wind sometimes tore off car doors and forced customers to enter the pub on their hands and knees.

It rained 250 days of the year in that part of North Yorkshire – on the other 115 it was probably drizzling or snowing – and in winter it was cut off by snowdrifts for weeks on end. There were no mains services, just a diesel generator, a radio telephone and a spring for water.

“Only an idiot would want to run that place,” I thought, dialling directory enquiries.

Seven days later my wife Sue and I arrived there, having climbed more mountains than Julie Andrews did in The Sound Of Music.

The loneliest pub in the country was also the ugliest, with collapsing rendering, cracked windows and flaking paintwork, but if the look of the inn was disappointing its surroundings were breathtaking, with an ocean of moorland stretching to the horizon beneath a vast cloudscape that was never the same for two seconds together.

We stood transfixed – it was love at first sight.

Inside the Tan Hill Inn the walls were black with damp, water dripped steadily on to a sodden carpet and we could hear rats scuttling across the ceiling.

We sat round a table, our eyes watering as the fi re filled the room with smoke, while the owners read my CV, asked a couple of cursory questions and then said: “We’ll be in touch.”

During the journey back home to the Peak District we considered whether to accept the job if it were offered.

“We’d be giving up a pretty near idyllic existence,” Sue said.

“We’d have to be mad to swap it for a cold, wet, windy, rat-infested ruin in the middle of nowhere.”

“So that settles it then,” I said.

“If they offer it we’ll take it.”

They did and the result of our folie a deux was that six frantic days later in spring 1978 we found ourselves behind the bar of the place also known as the Inn At The Top.

The news that another gullible young couple were trying their luck at the inn saw the local farmers out in force, mainly – as we later discovered – to place bets on how long we would last.

I was polishing a glass when one of them approached the bar, cap pulled low over his eyes, lower lip jutting out.

“Nah then lad, dost tha ken Swardle yows?”

“Pardon?”

“Thought so,” he said, stomping off to announce to a group of his peers that the new landlord was “some off-comer with plums in his gob” and a total ignorance of the Dale’s trademark breed of sheep.

However after that false start the regulars soon befriended us.

But not all our new acquaintances at the inn were as friendly. Our first job was to get rid of the rats.

I used enough Warfarin to clear the streets of Hamelin and within a week our sleep was no longer disturbed by the patter of tiny feet.

However, rats in the last stages of Warfarin poisoning tend to wander around in a drunken haze, making no attempt to avoid humans.

One lunchtime Sue was on the phone when a large rat made its unsteady way down the stairs, walked straight over her foot and disappeared into the packed dining room.

I stood rooted to the spot, waiting for the screams.

Astonishingly none came and when I plucked up the courage to go in there I found no trace of the rat and the customers enjoying an apparently untroubled lunch.

Somehow it had crossed the room un noticed and ended up in the bottle store, where I later found it, expired.

In those days pub licensing hours were very restricted. However, the Inn at the Top was a place where the normal rules did not apply. As long as the police weren’t watching we could proudly boast that “we never closed”.

The police were under orders to make regular after-hours inspections but the nearest police station was 20 miles away, along some of the most narrow and twisting roads in the country, without street lights, white lines or cats’ eyes.

They were understandably reluctant to make the journey too often, so we became the only pub in the country to be raided by appointment.

Every few months the phone would ring and an anonymous, but unmistakably policeman-like voice would say: “Mr Hanson? Mr Neil Hanson? A word to the wise, sir. The police will be paying you a visit at 11 o’clock tonight.”

And so it was that they duly appeared but found the door locked and the pub in darkness, albeit with the generator still running and a surprisingly large number of cars in the car park.

Neil Hanson has written a book about his days as Tan Hill’s landlord [ROSS PARRY]

The loneliest pub in the country was also the ugliest, with collapsing rendering, cracked windows and flaking paintwork, but if the look of the inn was disappointing its surroundings were breathtaking, with an ocean of moorland stretching to the horizon b

Honour satisfied, they disappeared back down the hill, whereupon the lights came back on and a dozen farmers who had been sitting out the raid in silence, refilled their pints as normal service was resumed.

In summer our biggest problem had been getting some sleep.

We were both working well over 100 hours a week. In winter staying warm, and alive, became the priority. We were snowed in for all but a handful of days between December 1978 and May 1979.

As the snow drifts piled up and the temperature fell below -20C, the generator broke down, the radio telephone stopped working and every drop of water – and most of the beer – in the pub froze solid.

The freezing temperatures made the inn as icebound as a trawler in the Arctic. Every surface was encrusted with ice and even filling the coal bucket required a pickaxe as well as a shovel.

One day we went outside to dig coal from the frozen heap, closing the door behind us. It promptly froze shut and no amount of pushing or hammering would move it.

With the temperature plummeting I smashed one of the windows in the end to get in. It was two days before we managed to get the door open again; not that it mattered, there weren’t any customers.

We then became the one thing I dreaded most: a pub with no beer.

One black morning a shepherd battled his way up through the snowdrifts because he’d run out of cigarettes. “Anything else?” I said brightly. He scanned the empty shelves. “Aye, I’ll just have a Guinness before I head back.”

I couldn’t pretend we didn’t have any – it was in full view – and I watched in silent horror, a slow tear trickling down my cheek, as the last drop of beer in the entire pub disappeared down his throat with a soft gurgle.

However, just as all seemed lost, salvation was at hand. Knowing the harshness of the winters in the Dales, the previous autumn my uncle had given us a box containing emergency “survival rations”: dehydrated food, bandages, foil blankets, windproof matches etc.

My uncle was also a gourmet cook, however, and when we opened the crate in our cold, dark, beer-less and nearly food-less pub in February 1979, among the “essential” supplies were: champagne, pâté de foie gras, pheasant in red wine, Belgian chocolates and freshly ground coffee.

As bad as our situation was not even the lack of heat, light and beer could spoil that fine meal.

The Inn At The Top By Neil Hanson is published by Michael O’Mara Books, price £8.99. To order a copy for £8.49 with free p&p call 0871 471 3466 or visit www.expressbooks.co.uk

You can also send a cheque or PO (payable to The Express) to: The Express Orders Dept, 1 Broadland Business Park, Norwich NR7 0WF.